Osaka Mayor’s Insurgent Party Stumbles in Boon for LDP

Osaka assemblywoman Mayu Murakami
entered politics to change Japan, part of a group started by
Mayor Toru Hashimoto in a bid to transform the country’s
politics. It may have peaked too soon.

Public support for Hashimoto’s Japan Restoration Party has
dropped as his positions on nuclear power and a territorial
dispute with South Korea have drawn fire. Having once aimed to
take more than 40 percent of the seats in the next election, the
JRP has scaled back its ambitions and now is seeking ties with
other opposition groups to weaken the two main parties.

“National support has fallen because voters aren’t getting
the right information and are only hearing our opponents’
views,” said Murakami, 27. “If people who are really concerned
about Japan’s future listen to what Hashimoto says in detail, I
think they will support him.”

While Hashimoto’s popularity falters, embattled Prime
Minister Yoshihiko Noda is grappling with a weakening economy
and opposition demands to fulfill a pledge to call an election
“soon.” The likely beneficiary is the Liberal Democratic
Party, which after being ousted from half a century of control
in 2009 has revived its fortunes under new leader Shinzo Abe,
political analyst Koichi Nakano said.

“The more real Hashimoto’s entry into national politics
gets, the more exposed he becomes,” said Nakano, a political
science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo. “If the
election takes place soon, that would give an advantage to the
LDP. Abe at this point is enjoying something like a honeymoon
period and with the Hashimoto threat receding, that would be
perfect timing for the LDP.”

Policy U-Turn

The LDP’s popularity has risen since Abe, a former prime
minister, took over as its head in September advocating a harder
line on a territorial dispute with China that has hurt Asia’s
two biggest economies. His party’s approval rating is 32
percent, double the ruling Democratic Party of Japan’s 16
percent and almost five times that of the JRP’s seven percent,
according to a Nikkei newspaper poll published Oct. 29.

A proponent of eliminating atomic power after last year’s
Fukushima nuclear disaster, Hashimoto dropped his opposition to
restarting two nearby atomic plants after it became clear Osaka
would struggle to meet its power needs.

“To be honest, I chickened out over the risks of blackouts,”
Hashimoto said at a June 8 press conference.

He suggested on Sept. 23 that disputed islets claimed by
Japan and South Korea be jointly managed, a stance that goes
against the position of both the DPJ and the LDP. The next day,
he fired off dozens of messages on Twitter re-asserting Japan’s
claims to the islets, known as Takeshima in Japanese and Dokdo
in Korea.

Public Reaction

Since the reversals, his fortunes have declined in the
polls. The percentage of voters who plan to vote for JRP in the
proportional representation section of the next election fell to
14.2 percent in a Fuji News Network poll published Oct. 7, from
23.8 percent the previous month. In a separate Kyodo News poll,
the number fell to 13.9 percent from 17.6 percent in September.
None of the polls gave a margin of error.

“Hashimoto may flame out pretty quickly,” said Gerald Curtis, a professor of Japanese politics at Columbia University
in New York. “The longer the election is put off, the more his
support will decline. For better or worse he is not a game
changer.”

Hashimoto, 43, a lawyer and former television personality,
in 2008 became governor of Osaka, the commercial center of
western Japan with a $490 billion economy. He quit his post
three years later to run for mayor, pledging to merge the two
jobs to reduce bureaucracy and save money, and won with almost
60 percent of the vote.

Voter Discontent

He aims to build his Osaka-based party into a national
force, tapping into voter discontent with both major parties
over the response to the country’s record debt and more than a
decade of deflation. The world’s third-largest economy faces a
contraction in the second half of the year, battered by declines
in industrial production and exports.

Japan’s industrial production fell 4.1 percent in September
from the previous month, the steepest since last year’s
earthquake and tsunami, while exports dropped 10.3 percent from
a year earlier, according to government data.

JRP strategist Hitoshi Asada, chairman of the Osaka
Prefectural Assembly, said support dropped because the party’s
fresh image was tarnished by the necessary recruitment of nine
little-known lawmakers from different parties to qualify as a
political party. Hashimoto has said he will remain mayor and not
run for parliament.

Political Catalyst

“We want to gather as much political power as possible for
our own party, but it’s no easy matter,” Asada said. “The
reason we exist is to act as a catalyst to bring together a
group of people who can agree on principles and values.”

The JRP’s success depends in part on the candidates it will
field in the election. Asada is part of a committee that has
interviewed hundreds of hopefuls, while warning them they will
have to raise money on their own, because the party will not
qualify for government funding until April.

The party hopes to win about 75 seats in the 480-member
lower house of parliament and is aiming to build a political
bloc that will include twice that number of lawmakers, he said.

“I think there are a lot of people who want something not
provided by the LDP or DPJ,” Asada said. “We are looking for
fresh faces who will not let them down.”